


Out of Step

by Daydreaming_Chimera



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Because there's also some fluff, Budding Love, Character Analysis, Crushes, F/M, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Fluff, Friendship, Granted "friendship" is in big air quotes since they're low-key mutually crushing, Mentions of Myth & Folklore, Mild Trust Issues, Petra's Imperial foster parents are jerks, Pre-Timeskip | Academy Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Quite a bit of angst, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings, not overly shippy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:47:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24419899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daydreaming_Chimera/pseuds/Daydreaming_Chimera
Summary: The night of the ball is an event fondly anticipated by all students, a chance to connect with those close to your heart, or at the very least enjoy the music and refreshments while conversing with friends.And dancing is nice...if you know how, either properly or at all.So sometimes it's best to step outside, away from the ruckus, and enjoy the quiet scenery.And why not bring along someone close to you while you're at it?
Relationships: Ashe Duran | Ashe Ubert/Petra Macneary
Comments: 15
Kudos: 24





	Out of Step

**Author's Note:**

> Good evening/morning!  
> This isn't my first fic in general but it's my first fic posted here, and, well, I am a bit excited! Really hoping y'all will like it. ^_^  
> Special thanks to Kaerra and ThePrimeOne for being my test audience and helping me fine-tune the work!  
> Enjoy!

Dancing’s more fun when you know the steps, and also when you don’t have two left feet.

They both find this out the hard way. They had enjoyed talking just amongst themselves; Petra would ask Ashe about all sorts of things, and he enjoyed answering. What’s this ball about? Do the dances symbolize anything? What are these refreshments? Do you think you could make them, sometime? Where does the “White Heron” part of the dance come from?

When she runs out of questions about the dance itself, she proceeds to inquire him about his life outside of their excursions out in town. Eventually, they just started conversing normally, about their studies, about how they thought they did on tests, about books they’d been reading in their spare time. She’s fascinated when he tells her about a story even _he_ hadn’t read before, one from the very outskirts of his country that borders into Sreng. He tells her that Ingrid introduced it to him, saying it was a bizarre but incredible epic. The main characters aren’t really knightly, she warned him in advance, but it was a worthwhile read, nevertheless.

“It’s really complicated, I’ve yet to really…understand the first part. Something about the sea bringing forth an immortal sage.” He starts, voice trailing as he tries to recall the details until they come flooding back and he recites the story with as much detail as he can. She nods, interested. “And the sage and another man enter a singing contest so that he may marry the other man’s sister, to which she takes her own life. It’s really sad, actually.”

For a minute, something in her wavers at his empathy.

“I last left off when this golden…device of some kind was built. Apparently, it’s able to make salt, and flour, and precious ore, and as such it’s highly valued, but I had to put it back since it was getting pretty late…”

She nods, the corners of her lips turning up every so slightly, and it would be visible if not for the way she were holding her chin, obscuring her mouth.

“I’m sorry, it’s a really confusing story, and…well…I must be boring you.”

“Oh no!” She interjects emphatically, gripping onto the glass in her hand a bit more securely. “I am considering this fascinating!”

He laughs incredibly lightly, it almost sounds like an exhale. “Really?”

“I am wondering how this device makes all of those things. It is like the...oh, the word for magic people who try to make creation of gold from nothing?”

“Alchemy, you mean?”

She can feel her eyes lighting up at his confirmation. “Yes, them!”

“Well, it was made by a blacksmith skilled in magic. Apparently, he can make anything.”

Her veins begin to bubble over with curiosity, and she wonders if her face betrays any of that. “Anything?” She parrots in bewilderment.

“Apparently.” He answers with a chuckle. “Ingrid apologized for informing me so early, but later in the book, he makes a flaming horse.”

Her lips part in amazement, and then she knows she’s grinning more than she has any right to be. Just this once, she allows herself to.

“You must have eagerness to get to that part.” She remarks with a chuckle.

“It’s starting slow, I must admit, but I’m sure it’ll pick up. I’m interested to see what happens next.”

“When you have found out, please be telling me, too.”

He smiles and nods. “I’ll be sure to fill you in on the details, then.”

They struggle for a minute to find more to say, but they’d rather not just say goodbye and go off into the rather daunting crowd. It’s easier to stick with your acquaintance, they both internally conclude. That is, until the current song stops, and students who wish to dance begin to scramble to find partners before the next one starts. In that moment, a girl that both could only assume was from the Golden Deer, as neither recognized her, weaved her way through the crowd, short in stature and shoulder-length black hair.

“Hey…umm…” the girl turns to Ashe and stammers, glancing in every which direction but his.

He smiles awkwardly back at her. “Can I help you?” He queries earnestly but still uneasily.

“I…” she continues, twiddling her thumbs and her eyes darting back and forth between him and the ground. “I wanna dance with someone tonight, and…would you like to?”

He pauses for a minute, taken a bit aback. He had told Petra beforehand that he wasn’t much of a dancer, rather clumsy, but if she knew him, which she hoped she did, he probably thought it’d be rude to decline.

“Well…sure?” He answers, she can already tell that he’s worried about tripping over his own shoes. The nervousness is written all over his face in spite of the smile to put up a good front. He glances to his partner and then back to Petra. “I’ll be right back, okay?”

Petra smiles, though she must admit she’ll be rather bored, daresay lonely, without him. “Have enjoyment.”

The two take their hands into their own almost hesitantly and weave through the crowd and onto the dance floor, leaving Petra alone.

And the silence, sans the chatter of everyone around her, proves to be rather uncomfortable.

She fiddles with the empty glass in her hand, once filled with sparkling water. She rather disliked the stinging sensation it gave her tongue, and she hadn’t the foggiest as to how so many of the other students could keep coming back for more. She contemplates putting it back when out of the corner of her eye a broad shouldered young man, brown hair cut incredibly short, approaches her. She somewhat knows him as being in her new house, but they never spoke in the two months she’d officially been with the Lions, and weren’t in the same class schedule.  
  
He puts a hand on her shoulder as she decides to temporarily rest the glass on the refreshments table.

“Evening, lovely.” He comments in a tone not entirely confident, as if he watched Sylvain’s wooing attempts and was trying to emulate him in order to win over dance partners. “You enjoying the ball?”

Petra tries to smile at him, but the whole situation is so foreign that she doesn’t even really know how to respond. “…I am thinking?”

The boy’s expression falters at her wording. She hopes that her mastery of the language, or lack thereof, isn’t leaving a poor impression on him.

He clears his throat and takes his hand off her shoulder. “Well, I just wanted to ask, well…” his face reflects several layers of anxiety he tries his hardest not to show through, to no avail. “You’re really pretty and I wanted to ask if you’d dance with me.”

Petra, while a bit flattered to be complimented in such a way, breaks eye contact and begins to fiddle with her braid. “I don’t know….” She mutters under her breath.

The boy tenses up and furrows his eyebrows. “Pardon?”

She returns eye contact once more “I…do not know the dance techniques of Fodlan.” She admits, subtly blushing with indignity.

And then he frowns, shoulders hunching. He pauses for quite a long time in a very awkward manner as he tries to recover from things not quite going as he planned. “Well…umm…sorry.” He mumbles. “I’ll…be on my way then, sorry for the trouble.”

With that, he turned to the direction from whence he approached her and walked away. She picked up her glass and hated to accept that the small sigh she let out was out of relief; she’d rather not flounder about on the dance floor like a live fish on a buttery skillet (as Bernie had so aptly put it in order to excuse herself from coming, aside from swiping a few pastries before sprinting back to her dorm) and make a spectacle of herself. Ever since her arrival in the new land, she had tried learning how to dance properly, but to be honest, she felt like she was tied to another person the whole time on top of keeping things like rhythm and movement in mind, and even then, it was all so…slow. The music, the steps, everything. And most of all, it felt so…empty. The dances in the mainland, at least ballroom dances like these, were not prayers or ballads depicted through movement (granted if what Dorothea told her was correct, the opera filled a similar niche but wasn’t quite there), but brief and unsuccessful courting attempts and proof of one’s status in society, something like the romance rituals of the grandiosely-plumed flightless fowls of Dagda she read about. 

She remembered, less than half a year after she first arrived in the Empire, she was once taught how to dance like that. A fruitless endeavor. After so many failed attempts at learning that style of dance, her host family grew more and more impatient, and eventually livid, and pulled her aside from her tutor and loudly berated her. They scolded her with emphasis on her clumsiness and inability to keep up with the tempo, — meanwhile other children her age had already mastered a dance so basic — screaming that she was an incompetent, graceless barbarian, and didn’t even have the articulation to make an adequate counter-argument until she began breaking out in tears. It was all so many years ago, and since then they deemed her a lost cause. She never bothered trying to learn how to dance again.

She stood there for not but two minutes before Ashe comes stumbling back through the crowd with a wave of his hand.

“The song is still playing, should you not still be dancing?” Petra questions him with the tilt of her head, inquisitive but with a twinge of rapport.

“I uhh…” his face becomes dusted with a soft shade of pink out of embarrassment. “I stepped on her toes no less than fifteen times. And may have accidentally bumped us into other dancers. Twice.” He looks down as his face grows redder and redder, scratching the back of his head nervously. “She thought it was for the best that we bowed out early.”

She tries not to chuckle, but his tone is so…sincere. 

_He is sincere, isn’t he?_ She asks herself, inwardly hopes.

“So, did anything happen while I was gone?”

She shakes her head, feeling rather humbled as she brings back to mind past events. “One of the classmates was asking me if I would be dancing with him, but I do not have knowledge as to how. The dances here, they give me confusion.”

Ashe laughs sympathetically. “I can’t say I blame you if my rather pitiful display is anything to go by.”

“I am sure you did not have nearly the amount of difficulty as you are thinking you are.” She assures him.

He laughs again, a bit more self-consciously this time. “You should have seen it, but thank you.”

They just smile at each other for a while, happy to be able to talk again.

Granted there was more than enough talk surrounding them, and it was getting claustrophobic, they both started to think.

She briefly excuses herself to place the glass on a cart for used plates, silverware, and the like to be taken to the dining hall for cleaning, later. The monk manning it smiles and nods in acknowledgement to her, but she can’t help but notice that he seems awfully bored, or at the very least very tired. With that, she made her way back to…did she actually let her guard down enough to consider him a friend?

“Would you have mind to go outside for some time?” Petra asks out of the blue as she returns to him, brushing her braid behind her back. “Some fresh air may be needed for the both of us.”

Ashe bows his head with a crooked, sheepish grin. “Honestly, I wouldn’t mind that.”

They cross through the various crowds as the music continues playing, growing softer and softer as they get closer to the exit. When they finally reach the door, facing the entrance to the training grounds, Petra takes in a deep breath of that savory outdoor air and exhales heartily.

It’s so clean, so crisp, so wonderful. 

And she tries to forget that it just occurred to her that she can’t remember what salt air smelled like.

“It really is nice out tonight.” Ashe interrupts her somber line of thought in a chipper tone. She nods in agreement as she looks up at the exceptionally cloudless sky, somewhat blocked by the walls.

And then Petra remembers from her first nights at the academy, from before leaving the Imperial house even arose to her as a possibility, a place she scoped out when she wanted to take her mind off of things.

She steps in front of him and takes both of his hands into her own. “I have knowledge of somewhere where it has nicer looks.” She chirps, just a hint of coyness accompanying the frankness in her voice. “May I be showing you the way?”

She doesn’t know why she’s offering him. Time and again her foster family told her to stay in her own house and avoid the riffraff from the other countries. They could be spies and assassins, trying to steal Brigid from them, and that no one would ever want to go out of their way to be actual friends with someone like her. After all, she can’t form a proper grammatically correct sentence, they chided at her, and that savage marking on her face would deter any civilized person from getting near her. She’s only a bargaining chip, that’s the only reason a Leicesterian or a Faerghan would ever approach her. For all she knows, they would tell her, he’s been a spy in league with Faerghus’ regent all along in order to steal her away under the all-too-convenient guise of an adopted son of a noble. Perhaps even an assassin hired by the Empire — like in the storybooks they’d read together where a witch would feign friendship with a maiden before killing her — after either she or her country did something to displease them; something they often threatened her with. He’s skilled at picking locks, for one, and on missions she’s noted that he heavily favors the role of a sniper (though he’s told her that he really wants to be a cavalier), staying hidden from a vantage point and picking off a foe from afar, both traits trained assassins excel in. These things should be a massive red flag for her. In spite of this, she decides to believe his story. 

She wants to believe it, more than anything. He had been nothing but kind to her since they had met, spy since the start or not a spy at all. 

If he was, in fact, a spy, well, he put up the act of the century, and she’d fallen for it utterly. However, at this point, she figured he was innocent until proven guilty.

And maybe he earned learning her favorite spot by this point. Besides, it was such a marvelous place, she needed to share it with someone, just so they would know it’s splendor, too.

She at least wants to enjoy tonight for a change instead of letting fear of what _they’d_ do, the paranoia _they_ tried to sew, dictate her every thought and action.

He grins, befuddled, like he wants her to repeat what she had just said. “Huh?”

She shakes his hands and pulls him just a centimeter further. “Come along!”

Petra lets go of one of his hands and keeps a firm grip on the other, leading the way through the shadow-touched stone paths and opening the small metal gate on their right before passing through. They were sure to briefly appreciate the beauty of the gardens, the moonlight hitting the grass and the deep magenta flowers in a spectacular fashion, and the bizarre spherical device inside the gazebo making the structure glow with a vivid, almost eerie, yet still elegant green from within as the rest of it remained obscured by the night’s veil. Opening yet another gate, they crossed another pathway, the entrance to the dining hall on their left, but continued going straight, opening a third gate. She could sense him looking around pensively, as if he were wondering if this was the place she was referring to. While the spacious field and the small white flowers practically glowing in the light of the moon would make it a lovely place in its own right, it didn’t quite compare to what she had in mind. One more gate and a few more paces, and they were by the dorm buildings, almost there.

“I realize now that this way is very…tedious? Is that the word with correctness?” She apologizes, feeling her eyebrows corrugate just a little as she frets over her word usage.

Ashe smiles and shakes his head, just a bit obscured by the lack of lighting, and she can tell that he’s mildly on edge because of it. “No, you’re fine, honestly. This isn’t tedious at all.” He half sighs, still keeping an upbeat expression. “So, is this the…?”

“No, I have apologies.” Petra answers him, frowning slightly. She looks back at the scenery ahead of her, the silhouette of the distant windmill twirling, covering the stars and uncovering them cyclically in a heartbeat’s time. The greenhouse’s glass roof reflects the moonlight just a bit better, creating a clearer outline. She sighs and tugs him towards the stairs, the heels of their shoes clicking ever so slightly against the stone, as well as causing the grass at the bottom of the steps to softly rustle. They keep pacing forward across the dorm yards, glancing fondly at the stray cats who gathered in the field to lounge about out of the corners of their eyes.

Until eventually, they reach the greenhouse, as well as the lakeside, the moon and stars’ reflections in the lake’s surface causing the water to shimmer resplendently and illuminate the area with an exquisite pale silver glow. Both take a moment to take in the scent of the earthy yet gentle freshwater air before she finally lets go of Ashe’s hands. He uses one of his newly freed hands to motion towards the direction of the pier, thinking that their walk is over.

“This is the place, huh?”

Petra shakes her head, noticing his eyes flickering with curiosity in the moonlight. “No. It is not the pier we are going to.”

“Huh?” She can see him ever-so-slightly tilting his head in confusion.

She begins to make her way past the first bush by the greenhouse’s side, eyes fixed on the tree ahead, signaling for him to come along.

“The pier has a scenery of beauty, but the…the angle, I believe it is, gives obscurement to the best sights.” She calls out to him. She sees that he begins to follow her, fairly cautiously she might add, as he brushes against the initial shrubbery and carefully walks on the more narrow pathway, made so by even more shrubs, that skirted the lakeside. Ashe looks over at the quaint waters as they gently sway and overlap over one another. She wonders if he’s trying to spot any fish or if he’s simply taking in the imagery.

Petra snaps her attention back to the tree growing by the greenhouse’s stained glass window-studded wall and pauses before taking a running start. Before he can ask her what she’s doing, she leaps onto one of the branches and grasps at the trunk. Once she’s sure her spot is secure, she analyses her surroundings before finding the next branch and lifting herself onto it. Then the next one, and the next. While she climbs it swiftly, and she can sense how Ashe is impressed, she still subtly slips a few times, and under her breath she grumbles in frustration at the poor grip her heels give her in this situation. At the same time, though she had climbed this tree several times before, Petra still gets a sense of nostalgia. It’s not quite the same sort of pine Brigid had, but the smell is still so crisp and refreshing…and somehow familiar. It came from a simpler time, when she begged her father to teach her to climb five years before he left to fight, and left to die. In her mind at the time, she thought that if she could climb to the top of those behemoth pines, at least a hundred feet tall she was sure, then maybe she could touch the sky. Maybe if a cloud passed by, she could leap onto it and sail across the sky on it. Maybe she could see the whole world from that cloud.

It’s not quite a cloud, but when she reaches far enough up the tree, she positions herself to jump off of it and onto the roof of the greenhouse. She nevertheless feels like she has butterflies in her lungs, her nerves screaming as the height catches up to her. She may have done it before, but one wrong slip and she could still be grievously injured. She takes the leap, and after hearing Ashe yelp a bit in concern and with mild bit of scrambling, makes it safely onto the roof. She adjusts to sit in a safer spot, still breathing a bit heavily from the adrenaline, and looks down at her companion.

He looks back up at her and smiles, though she can tell he’s still a tad anxious, himself. “Wow! The way you climbed that tree would make a squirrel green with envy!”   
Jealous squirrels! She finds it genuinely amusing, and laughs wholeheartedly at his statement. She’s a bit honored — she can feel her face growing a bit warm — she must admit, but there’s something so humorous to her about what he said that she can’t help but chortle. She crawls a bit closer to his direction as she begins to calm herself, and gestures to him.

“Come!” She states simply, still a bit giggly. Ashe’s reaction, on the other hand, immediately takes a shift from light to hesitant.

He pauses, looking at the tree, then looking back at her. He repeats this process he speaks again.

“Oh…I…don’t know if I can-“

Petra gestures at him again. “I have seen you in past times climbing up trees in battles. To have advantages of higher ground upon the enemy, yes?”

Ashe fidgets a little, letting out a sharp exhale, looking the other way. “I mean, you’re right, but…” he returns eye contact again, his silhouette standing out the lake’s shimmering surface, the very edges of it catching the reflected light. “I still might fall…especially with that jump…”

She gestures a third time, smile wavering as he continues to doubt himself, but she still knows he’s capable of joining her. “I shall be catching you, do not have fear.”

In the face of her insistence, he cracks a timid grin. “Alright, I suppose it’s worth a try.”

Nervously, Ashe walks towards the base of the tree, looking at it up and down before reaching out for a branch, shaking it a few times before confirming its stability. After pausing to take a deep, tentative breath, he pulls himself onto the branch and carefully manages to find his balance. Petra could tell that, without the rush of battle, Ashe is a lot more fearful while climbing. Similarly to the first branch, he reaches out for a second one, shakes it, and slowly ascends further. The tree obscures his figure from any lighting, so she can’t see him climb, but she can hear him. She can hear the rustle of the pine needles as he tests the limbs for safety, his grunts as he pulls himself higher, and his frightened exclamations when he feels he’s going to fall, and he keeps climbing up and up until he’s visible once more. After one rather close call — just about six feet below from where he had to jump — he slips and cries out before grabbing onto an adjacent tree limb, practically hugging it for dear life. As he is about to fall, Petra shouts with alarm and rushes as close to the edge as she can, extending out her hand reflexively even though he couldn’t possibly reach it from where he was. Once he’s sure he’s safe, he looks up at her and laughs nervously, though the smile is still authentic.

And she can’t help but smile back.

“Sorry for scaring you…” Ashe murmurs with awkward remorse.

Petra lowers her head and snickers. “I only have thankfulness that you are unhurt.” She promptly returns eye contact with him and sighs with relief, and he sighs in reply.  
It’s a sort of shared silence as they just look at each other, appreciating how everything turned out okay.

Then it’s shattered as Ashe resumes scaling the spruce, a moment both feel bad to end. He does, however, make it to his destination, and right before he jumps, he visibly, quietly panics. His breathing quickens, his eyes dart about — though most of all down at the stone path below where he’d be lucky to get only a broken leg should he miss and plummet — his eyebrows furrow, and then he begins to tremble.

So Petra extends her arms, wordlessly assuring him that she’d make sure he would be alright.

And that assurance is just what he needs as he takes the leap of faith, and true to her promise, she catches him by the elbows and helps him up to the roof.

Both of their hearts are beating rapidly after that stunt, and embrace for an extended period of time before they relax and part, though upon noting how they had hugged for so long, they both begin guffawing, partly from exhilaration after the leap, partly out of embarrassment given how awkward it was out of context. 

As the amusement (and sheepishness) between them began to simmer down, Petra taps Ashe on the shoulder and points to the view the greenhouse roof gave them of the lake.

  
And the slow dawning of awe on his face was priceless.

  
And so, she looks back out to the lake to stare along with him. The sky itself now significantly less obscured, spare the hulking main building of the academy to their left, but even then it’s much less obtrusive than it would be if they’d gone to the pier. Now, the entire galaxy was before them. Stars danced, swirled, and fell, the waning gibbous moon hovering amidst its far smaller, twinkling neighbors, working alongside them to fully decorate the sky in lights. Tilting one’s head down, one could see the aqueduct connected to the greenhouse, otherwise an obstacle for seeing the sky at its fullest, now a part of the spectacle. The water falling from it sparkling in the moonlight, every droplet gleaming with a silvery green, like flowing silk ribbons.   
  
Looking further down was the entire other half of the show. The lake itself had gone from a reflective surface to a lightly rippling mirror of the night sky. In the currents, one could see the oblong shape of the glowing moon shining right back, but more softly than the body in the sky it was imitating. Small glisters of the stars’ reflections also shone in the undulating waters, disappearing and reappearing almost like fireflies. Come and gone so quickly that one would begin to wonder if they really even saw it to begin with, only for it to return and confirm that what they saw was no mirage.

And finally, looking to the glass roof they sat upon, they notice that it, too, glitters in the moonlight, so faintly that it was barely noticeable until now.

And she looks back at him, his breath stolen and his cheeks growing rosy as his eyes shimmer with wonderment.

Seeing his smiling slack jaw and shining eyes, Petra feels like his unbridled elation is the best part of it all for some reason.

Ashe lets out a deep, shaky breath as his grin widens. “Amazing…” he practically gasps. “This is even better than it would have been at the pier…” and he turns to her, his eyes glimmering so brightly that she mistakes them for peridots.

Somehow this makes her feel like she’s taking more of a leap of faith than when she first thought of climbing the tree and onto the roof to see the lake from a better angle for the first time.

“And you come here often?”

She nods, a bit more shyly than she would like, but something is a bit off in her head right now. “Yes.”

He lets out an impressed sigh and runs his fingers through his somewhat unruly hair, she notices it has some dead pine needles caught in there, maybe some sticks as well. “I have half a mind to do so, too. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s incredible…”

Petra adjusts her sitting position to bring her knees closer and hugs them. She feels this unfamiliar giddiness dance in her lungs, and a bit in her face. “When I am having…have the…have troubles sleeping, or when I am feeling fear, I come here. It has remind…it reminds me of my home.”

“It does?”

“It does.” She confirms to him. She scolds herself internally for what she’s about to do, she knows she shouldn’t run her mouth, but at the same time…something tells her that it’ll be okay if she opens up just this once. “It gives me some…nostalgia I am thinking is the word you use. It pales when compared to how it was in Brigid, but I would greatly like to spend time looking at sights that were looking like this with my father when I was of an age that was lesser.”

Ashe pensively rests his cheek in the palm of his hand, elbow propped against his knee. “He did?”

“I used to have a dread of darkness.” She elaborates, heart in her throat, hammering in her head as the memories flood back, for better or for worse. “I was listening to the tales the older children would be telling around the fire at the setting sun. They would tell me about the floating-“

Petra halts when she notices the sudden tension on Ashe’s end, face contorted to a grimace as he mentally prepares himself for a horrific yarn, fingers fearfully digging into his cheek. It unintentionally pulls his lower eyelid down and Petra honestly worries he might end up scratching himself by accident. She clears her throat and decides to skim over the details on the stories about flying heads that ate bad children in the dead of night, or shark-lizard men who came out of the tide to kidnap those who violated the laws of the spirits — especially unfaithful spouses — and drag them into the abyss, often turning them into more creatures like themselves and repeating the cycle.

“That is being, umm, nothing of what is important. What has importance is that I was given dread that made sleeping a difficulty. My father, he had seen how I had not been sleeping for many days, and he had decided to do something to help me.” She leans back, silently sighing, and looks back up at the sky. There’s just the gentlest of breezes that caresses her face. Her heart flutters unevenly; it’s been forever since she’s vocalized such memories, the first time she’s ever vocalized them to someone who wasn’t an inanimate object, the first time someone was willing to listen. She thinks that maybe, yes, the professor might be willing to listen as well, but now is not the time. She wasn’t ready to hear such memories just yet.

“He had taken me to the beach when night had fallen, he was wanting to show me that there was no fear to be had. Me and him…” She tilts her head back to savor the returning soft zephyr. “…We were sitting together for many hours, listening to the tide hum, seeing the water glow, and the sky shine and dance as it enfolded the whole world. When I was having fears, hearing noises and having too many thoughts of the dark, he was telling me about the meanings of stars, that the dark is not to be feared.” Petra pauses, and nudges Ashe in the shoulder before pointing at one of the brightest stars in the sky. “You see that one?”

“You mean the really bright one in the cluster that looks like a ladle?” Ashe leans a bit closer to her and tries to confirm which star she’s referring to. “That’s the North Star, vital for travelers, right?”

Petra nods and lowers her arm. “Yes. It has great importance in Brigid as well.” She has a recess in her rumination with a sigh, not sure whether it’s because she’s sentimental, or if she’s just trying to gather her thoughts. “Many many years ago, an ice spirit — one that had been…had taken the form of a great fish — lived in the seas before the people found the land. There were great rains and snows that flooded the world, and the people fled on boats by hundreds and hundreds to escape the drowning. There was no land…that’s what was thought, until they saw a shimmering below the water. The ice spirit’s tail was glowing like many colored lights, and following those lights the people had found the only land left in the world…at least, that was what we had thought before Fodlan and Dagda had been making…had made themselves known to us.”

She temporarily interrupts her story to steal a glance at him, see if he’s interested in what she’s saying, and that strange, fluttering sensation in her chest and throat return with twice the force when she sees him smiling at her explanation of the legend — that same look in his eyes when he tells her about a book he read recently — and she can finally confirm that the feeling is…pleasant.

Petra scratches her nose a bit bashfully before continuing with the story. “When the ice spirit had completed its work, the great spirits had rewarded its charity to the people by granting it the immortality gift, and they had placed it in the sky so that it would give guidance to the people when the day grew dark. It would also give the directions to sailing people with its glowing tail, like it had been doing all those years ago, as it is always swimming to the north.”

“That’s really fascinating!” Ashe declares in response in a heartfelt tone, expression lighting up with genuine interest. He wants to hear more, she can tell, and it soothes her heart all the more, wondering if it’s showing in her countenance. “It really is interesting how, no matter where you go, people have accounts on what the shapes stars make mean. It really makes the world feel a bit closer together, I suppose.” He bites his lip as he gently points from the North Star and downward, like he’s tracing the sky with the tip of his finger. He moves it in a rhombus shape before gliding straight to the right, directing both of their attentions on an even brighter star, a bright blue one.   
“I’m sure you know the story about the Rite of Rebirth, right?”

“Yes.” Petra replies, internally rehearsing what she knew of the account, however patchy it was. “I had no knowledge until I had been coming here, though. It was not until Ferdinand had told me that I had learnings of it.”

Her foster family neglected to tell her about the customs of the Fodlandic religion. Like many nobles in the Empire, they were not particularly devout, if they believed at all, and weren’t shy about stating as such. They would still hold it over her head, however, that she was not familiar with the beliefs of the mainland, so common across the nation, and would mock her accordingly. Half of what she understood about their customs she learned from faithful classmates (mostly Ferdinand, who could go on for about an hour on the subject. Sometimes Linhardt would educate her as well, and now Mercedes and the professor would pitch in with ardor and detail), and the other half from records in the library. There was still so much to familiarize herself with, however, so she could barely call herself well-learned on the subject.

He shifts just a bit closer to her. “My father — my blood father, not Lonato — told me about it when I was a kid. It was really long ago, but I have some vague memories about it.” He blinks rather pensively, remaining silent for a few moments, trying to string his words together properly. “I remember that we closed our restaurant for the night, the sky was absolutely cloudless, and then we blew out the candles we set up as celebratory decorations and made our way to a local Church. My father picked me up and carried me on his shoulders…and he pointed out the star to me, brighter than it had ever been. He recited the story to me, and I’d never been in such awe before or since.” He paused again, attempting to guide even more past events to the surface of his mind. “I was…I think four back then? I remember Gosse was a baby at the time, my mother was stressing how much she hoped he’d behave during the service…”

“Gosse is your brother that you have been speaking to me about?”

“Yeah.” He continues staring at the blue star, as if the more he looks, the more clearly he can reminisce. “Other than that, I remember the moon being full and beautiful. It was a lot like tonight, actually.” As soon as he says that, he reconsiders and inhales sharply. “Well, the moon’s not full tonight, but…”

It’s Petra’s turn to move closer to him. “Those are what you call semantics, yes?”

Ashe chuckles, and it makes her feel…warm inside. “Yeah, I suppose so.”

But then his chuckling dies down, and his smile fades, and her heart can’t help but sink as it does. 

“…He was a great man.”

Petra remains quiet, but out of understanding. She wants him to know that she’s listening. After all, he’s listened to her, already.

“I don’t remember much of him, but he really was a great man. He was always so kind to the customers…sometimes he’d let the ones he knew were down on their luck to eat for free. We never broke even enough for him to ever teach me how to read, but he always told me that if he could have one wish, it would be for me and Gosse to receive that kind of education.” He blinks, and closes his eyes for a very, very long time. She can hear his breathing tremble a little, but he does his best to control it, keep it even, keep the memories from overflowing like water poured into a glass from a pitcher held by an absentminded and distracted individual. “He got really sick after getting some firewood one day. He wanted to get some extra kindling since it was unusually cold that year. …He passed away shortly after… …He never got to meet Vi.”

She could tell he didn’t want to start crying. She could practically hear him say _“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to ruin your evening with that depressing note”_. She could see all the signs she knew too well from her own experience in her old home…sometimes even at the academy when she didn’t want anyone to know what she went through. His prolonged pauses as he blinks, the way he practically holds his breath, how he tries so hard to not have his lip quiver…

So she hugs him. She hugs him gently, but with all of the sincerity of her heart.

“Your father sounded like a kindly man.” Petra whispers as she tightens her embrace just a little. 

Ashe hugs her back and buries his nose into her shoulder, fighting back a sob. “I miss Lonato, too…”

Petra closes her eyes as he holds her more firmly. “What he did was wrong…it was very wrong…but I miss him…he…” he chokes for air, not realizing how tense he’s been. “…He did so much for the three of us…”

She doesn’t know too many of the details of that mission in particular. She knows Ferdinand was asked to accompany the rest of the class before he had transferred to the Blue Lions (he had been the first of the Eagles to leave, roughly at the same time as Flayn’s disappearance, followed by Petra herself and then Bernadetta, and Dorothea would frequent the classroom in her off time and told her friends (and Ferdinand) that she was tempted to be the next to leave as the merry antics of the Blue Lions sounded like a joy to be a part of, and Petra hopes the others will eventually join, too), and he gave her and the other Black Eagles a quick summary of the events that had transpired. What she did know, however, was that she at least understood how he felt. Petra’s father may not have revolted against the Empire solely out of a personal grudge or a similar selfish motive, nor did he reveal a previously buried darker side that proved to be his downfall, but…

“I am missing my father, as well…” she says in a soft, almost inaudible voice. At the same time, she can’t help but become a bit emotional along with him as her empathy grew. “He…he was killed with my mother when Brigid and Dagda had invaded the Empire…”

He sniffles once, resting his chin on the crook of her neck. “I’m sorry…”

“He was a man with incredibility. He had been teaching me to have courage before his passing. I have a hole still in my heart where he used to be placed, but I have made peace.”

They stay together for a while longer. Several long, silent seconds tick by until a solid minute has passed. As Ashe collects himself, he pulls away from her.

“Thank you.” Ashe mutters, wiping his nose with his sleeve and closing puffy eyes. “I’m sorry about all that…I just-”

Petra shakes her head. “You have no need to be apologizing. I had once read in a book from my past class that sorrow hidden is sorrow that grows. It is better to have the pain off of your heart than…accu….accumulating in it.”

She mentally notes that she should take that advice to heart, more. She knows that she’s let a lot of pain from the past five years build up, she’s bitten her tongue all that time out of fear of what the Empire would do to her, to Brigid, if she said anything. She’d been a bird in a cage. She had been in that cage for so long that she’d figured she’d never leave it. Maybe if she had stayed any longer, she’d convinced herself that the cage was all there was left in her life, and she’d not want to fly anymore. That she’d be the Empire’s songbird, their prized pet…only for them to toss her out and have delinquents pelt her to death with stones once they grew weary of her or her flock.

Then Ashe takes her hands into his own out of gratitude, and he tells her once more “Thank you.”, and suddenly she feels like she’s safe to sing, maybe fly away if she wants to when this is over.  
  
The professor pulled some strings somehow to get her out of the Black Eagle house, just that much more out of the grasp of the Empire. Negotiations with Edelgard, connections via her friendship with the Archbishop, perhaps both. All Petra knows is that she’s that much closer to freedom. Something she thought she’d never attain.

And that one small taste of freedom was all that it took to give her enough hope to both know that she’d return home someday, _alive_ and not on a funerary cot with false condolences from the Empire, and that she could now, at long last, _trust_.

So, in spite of the dread of persecution that her foster family had attempted to plant in her mind, that no one would conceivably see her as anything more than a political pawn, that no one outside of the Empire would approach her with intentions other than controlling Brigid, that all anyone saw was a hopeless barbarian without an ounce of redeeming qualities, and all of the things they stressed as they reluctantly sent her to the Officer’s Academy…

Petra feels like, _knows_ , she can _trust_ him.

Trust him to not be a spy, an assassin, or a fairytale sorcerer like _they_ would have told her.

Trust him to be…her _friend_. That is, if he felt the same way.

As she stares right into those celadon eyes, she wishes to tell him everything. He’s had inklings before of what she’s been through. They once read a book together about a shapeshifting maiden from the sea who was abducted by a lecherous fisherman, and another where a witch had kidnapped a young girl and locked her in a tower and threatened to turn her into a fox that the hunters would surely strike down if she let anyone but the witch into the keep or if she did anything to anger her, and both times her attitude noticeably changed. During one of them, she was sure she let slip that she related to the girl in the story, only to nervously demand he forget what she said out of fear what the Empire would do to her and her people if they knew…  
  
Sometimes she wondered if he had something to do with the professor’s insistence that she join her class. If he told her his suspicions.

“…Ashe?”

“Yeah?”

But as much as she wants to, as much as she can now trust him, she can’t say a word about it.

Not now, maybe when she’s safely out of the Empire’s grasp…whenever that may be.

But at least she’s certain that day will eventually come, now, and she doesn’t belong to the Empire. She is a human being, not a pet bird.

“…Would you like for me to be telling you more about the star stories?”

Ashe blinks once, red in the face but not mentioning anything when he briefly glances down at their hands, still intertwined. “Absolutely.”

They turn back around to the night sky, releasing one another’s hands with a bit more self-consciousness, and she points out the long, snakelike shape as the serpent who tried to devour the moon, now sealed forever in the sky, the moon just out of reach of his jaws as a punishment from the spirits.

And he points out the star formations only seen in this season to indicate when to plant this specific crop.

  
And as both of them have a newfound warm, fuzzy feeling in their chests, they figure that it’s a lot better than clumsily blundering across the dance floor.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading, hope you liked it!  
> By the way, most of the legends in the story mentioned, even the book at the start, were references to real life folklore (excluding the glowing-tailed fish, kind of made that up on the spot). Eager to see who can spot what. ;D  
> Anyway, God Bless, stay safe, and have a great day! ^_^


End file.
